


break me down and build me up

by FortySevens



Series: Every Other Heartbeat [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, DameRey, Developing Relationship, F/M, Getting to some happier times, Hurt/Comfort, I’m not calling it a cameo but there are some visits from some dead people, Meditation, Minor Pilot Cameos, Platonic Hand-Holding, Post TLJ, Reference to Star Wars fandom-typical violence, SPOILERS for TLJ, The Reckoning Is In Chapter Four, Three plus One, and Some Non-Platonic Hand-Holding Too, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-30
Packaged: 2019-03-09 14:08:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13483083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FortySevens/pseuds/FortySevens
Summary: Rey rolls her eyes at him, “Let me try to help. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let you go back to whatever this is and read some old Jedi texts to try to drown out whatever I’m trying not to hear.”“Oh, so you’re doing this for you,” Poe says, eyes going a little wide, because he didn’t think it was possible for him to speak, let alone try to make a joke—unless his sarcasm was too biting, and it really wasn’t a joke but—Apparently, it was a joke, because she lets out a quiet laugh before she shrugs and leans against the padding at her back, “If it makes you feel better, we can go with that,” she cocks her head to one side. “Come on, get up from there.”--Three (of many) times Rey helps Poe work out his issues through unconventional meditation, and one time Poe watches Rey meditate like a Jedi.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Annnnnnnnnnnd we're back with another post-TLJ Damerey fic! Tags will update as I post the next three chapters, because A: spoilers, and B: I'm kind of becoming predictable (at least to me when it comes to the way I write post-TLJ fic. It's cool. I do what I want.
> 
> Writing through the perspective of male characters has never been easy for me, but as soon as I started writing this one, I knew that this one had to be from Poe’s perspective. So, here we are. *Throws hands up in the air* Cool. Good deal. Let’s go.
> 
> Title from Imagine Dragons’ Whatever it Takes, but has nothing to do with the creepy mermaids from the music video I played on repeat a million and a half times while writing this. 
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 156:  
> “On a scale from one to ten, how bad do you think it would be if-“ 
> 
> “At least a twenty.”

**The First Time**

 

This is not remotely how Poe Dameron imagined things would go after he and the other survivors of the Battle of Crait settled into hyperspace.

 

He certainly did _not_ think he’d ever find himself sitting in the Millennium Falcon’s galley, in the middle of what’s probably ship’s night, with a blanket around his shoulders as he tries to make his hands stop shaking through _sheer force of will_.

 

But here he is.

 

And it  _sucks._

 

He knows all too well that the high of surviving can fade rapidly and leave a person sick and disoriented. He himself has gone through plenty of nasty post-mission crashes before, but this really is the first time he’s had a chance to _sit down and think_ since, well, since before General Organa sent him to Tannul to find Lor San Tekka and the map to Luke Skywalker—a couple weeks and a hundred years ago.

 

Trying to stay calm while grappling with the weight of every single event that occurred between then and now is _exhausting_ , but not bad enough for his traitorous body to let him rest.

 

Not with the way the First Order beat his body before Kylo Ren ripped open his mind to find out where he stashed that Force-forsaken map, not with the way every single decision he’s made ever since has led to death and destruction of his people, of his _friends_ , not with the way the Resistance has fractured into pieces so small he has no idea what they’re supposed to do next, other than try to find a way to _survive_. But even that’s not enough, because there all that’s left of the best parts of New Republic government, which, for all its benefits of _not being the Empire_ , still allowed the First Order to grow into a massive machine, and that really just makes them a handful of rebels in a too small and too famous ship.

 

And why is it so kriffing _cold_ in here?

 

Another body-wracking shiver rockets through Poe’s body, and he slumps further into the corner he’s been sulking in since he convinced General Organa to get a few hours of rest—especially after the day _she’s_ had. She needs it. Hells, she’s needed a vacation from the endless war that’s been _her entire life._

 

And before it too.

 

He holds the blanket tighter around his shoulders with one shaking hand, jams the other into his armpit in the hopes that the cramped space between his upper arm and ribcage will encourage the little tremors rattling through his fingers to _go the fark away._

 

On the positive side, at least it’s so late that there’s no one to see him like this.

 

Because he is Poe Dameron, Commander—no, Captain, no, whatever the hell he is to whatever this Resistance, Rebellion, _whatever_ it is going to become—and all he knows is that he can’t afford for the last of his people to see him breaking down like this. He has to be a leader now, now that Akbar and the rest of the admiralty are gone, now that Amilyn Holdo is—

 

No.

 

This is not the time to think about _that_ , not if he wants to be able to breathe without flinching anytime soon.

 

Not to mention—

 

Poe doesn’t try holding back his groan when he hears the patter of careful footsteps just beyond the relatively secluded confines of the empty galley. He casts a glance to one side, where a trio of droids are powered down for the night and plugged in to recharge, and he prays to _any_ entity that may or may not be listening with a friendly ear to their plight that whoever’s walking up keeps walking past the galley doors or stops and turns around or _at the very least_ doesn’t do anything that’ll wake the droids.

 

Especially not _his_.

 

He can’t let BB-8 see him in this state.

 

But because his luck has been _shit_ since this mess started, the footsteps, light and quiet as they are, grow louder against the unforgiving deck, and it can only mean one person, what with the way everyone else he knows walks around like they grew up in a military—legitimate or not—with heavy steps that almost vibrate through the floors to harken their arrival, unless they’re on a mission that requires a lighter step.

 

The footsteps keep up until Rey turns the corner, because of course it’s Rey.

 

Poe tamps down on a handful of curses, because maybe, if he’s quiet enough and crammed into the corner of the banquette enough, she’ll think he’s sleeping and leave him alone.

 

But then again, from what he’s heard, Rey’s _so Force sensitive_ , she can probably hear him freaking out from the other side of whatever system they’re sneaking their way through.

 

“I’m not _that_ good, you know,” she says, voice low in deference to the droids and the lack of movement on the ship, which most likely means they’re the only ones awake right now.

 

Poe winces as Kylo Ren tearing through his mind without care while searching for BB-8’s location flashes through his memories, and Rey takes a step forward and hastens to add, “I’m not in your head. You’re broadcasting so loud I couldn’t drown you out if I tried.”

 

“Have you been trying?”

 

She shrugs, looks a little sheepish as she turns her gaze to her feet, “I’m not very good at this yet,” she repeats, rocks back on her heels before she looks up at him through narrowed eyes, picking his form out of the shadows he’s definitely trying to hide in. “You look awful.”

 

Poe rolls his eyes, huffs out a laugh that sounds pained, even to his own ears, “You sure know how to charm a guy.”

 

“Picking up people skills wasn’t one of my priorities, back on Jakku,” she snorts and sits down in the banquette, but on the other side of the table, like she doesn’t want to crowd him. “Everything’s covered. You should try to get some rest.”

 

“Or I could go through inventory and see how we need to divvy up our rations until we get to—wherever the hell we’re going,” he says, but doesn’t make any attempt to go anywhere near the rations, stored down in one of the smuggling compartments that _isn’t_ jammed full of war-weary Rebels.

 

“Commander D’Acy already did that, twice,” she points out like they both didn’t see it happen, because everyone did, since the last thing _anyone_ needs is for someone to panic about their food stores until they get to somewhere that offers more than a bunch of cases of sealed ration packs.

 

Poe sighs, runs his hand through his hair and then stuffs it back under the blanket and into his armpit because it’s still shaking, “It doesn’t matter. I’m not going to get any sleep tonight either way. Too much to think about, it’s not worth it to try.”

 

Silence falls for a while and he stares off, but he keeps Rey in the corner of his gaze and watches her mull over whatever she wants to say to him.

 

She chews on her lower lip, taps her fingers against the tabletop and opens her mouth, closes it, and then tries again, “What if there’s something I could do to help?”

 

He swallows hard, tries to figure out the nicest way to tell her off, but there really isn’t one with the way he’s feeling right now, “I don’t want you in my head,” he bites out quick, like ripping a bacta patch off. “I can’t-not after. No. No _thank you_.”

 

The manners drilled into him by his mother—so, so long ago—don’t seem to soften the blow any, but at the same time, Rey doesn’t look offended or upset that he can tell, but he’s not so good at gauging that right now, and maybe—

 

He’s _definitely_ overthinking things right now.

 

Poe tries to take a deep breath, but his chest is tight and it’s hard to get enough air in, and he _knows_ this is all part and parcel of a panic attack, and it’s definitely his _least favorite_ part, if he had to choose—

 

The hand Rey places on his blanket-covered arm jolts him out of the shitspiral of his thoughts with the force of an X-wing making an unexpected drop in atmo, leaving him dazed and a little sick as he boggles at her ability to move quick enough that he didn’t notice. Breathing does come just a little bit easier though, so he tamps down on his instinct to move her hand off him.

 

“Hey,” she snaps quietly, shakes his arm a little. “You with me?”

 

He opens his mouth, but his voice fails him, so he swallows hard and tries again, “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

 

She rolls her eyes at him, “Let me try to help. If it doesn’t work, I’ll let you go back to whatever this is and read some old Jedi texts to try to drown out whatever I’m trying not to hear.”

 

“Oh, so you’re doing this for _you_ ,” he says, eyes going a little wide, because he didn’t think it was possible for him to speak, let alone try to make a _joke_ —unless his sarcasm was _too_ biting, and it really _wasn’t_ a joke but—

 

Apparently, it _was_ a joke, because she lets out a quiet laugh before she shrugs and leans against the padding at her back, “If it makes you feel better, we can go with that,” she cocks her head to one side. “Come on, get up from there.”

 

She’s already standing and moving before he has the chance to think about whether or not he’s going to do the same, and instead he watches the way she moves, the way she carefully carries herself, like she’s been tortured recently, tortured in a way that doesn’t leave scars, in a was much like—

 

_Stop it Dameron, you can barely handle your own shit right now, there’s nothing you can do to help her_.

 

“Wait,” he says, slow, when he thinks of where they are and what this ship has gotten up to in the last few years, because that’s easier than thinking about anything else. “What _Jedi texts?_ ”

 

Halfway to standing, Rey stops and braces her hands on the table for balance, “The once I took from Ahch-To, because I left to go, you know—”

 

Yes, he does know, and the less said about that the better.

 

“Ahch—you stole texts from the _first Jedi temple_? Those books are _thousands_ of years old!”

 

Rey rolls her eyes, and it reminds Poe a little bit of BB-8 right after he first programmed it at the academy, back when he was still trying to figure out how to teach the little droid about important things like respect for other droids and _boundaries_ , “First of all, the temple’s just a really old tree, and secondly, it’s not like there’s any other Jedi back there to-“ she breaks off, swallows hard and he thinks he sees her tear up a little, but the galley’s dim light tends to play tricks, and when she blinks it’s gone. “There’s no reason for them not to be here, with me.”

 

She shifts out of the banquette and stands tall, says the words with enough conviction that, for a second, Poe thinks she might think he’s going to fight her on it, “And I’ve stored them safely in a drawer,” she goes on, like she feels she has to explain her decision-making to _him_ of all farking people. “What?”

 

Poe shakes his head, doesn’t have it in him right now to explain it to her, “Never mind,” he waves a hand, flexes his fingers when they still tremor a bit. “So, what are we doing?”

 

If Rey has any thoughts about how abrupt that subject change was, she keeps them to herself, holds a hand out, “Come on, we need a little space for this.”

 

Everything in him hurts at the thought of moving, “Rey, I got stunned into a bulkhead yesterday,” he blurts before he can catch himself, and his cheeks go hot at the embarrassing memory, so he looks resolutely down at the table, traces the claw marks scored into it in the hopes she won’t see his well-deserved shame. “I don’t have it in me to spar tonight.”

 

It's not a bad thought, he’s spent many a night beating a bag or going one-on-one with his just as sleepless wing-mates, but—

 

_Kriff_ , he really might be getting old.

 

“Not what we’re doing,” she quips, and out of the corner of his eye, he sees her step up next to him, her hand hanging in the air between them. “Will you just trust me?”

 

Still unable to look at her and the way she almost _glows_ in the dim light, Poe swallows hard at the lump in his throat, “I haven’t been making the best decisions lately,” he hedges, because she really has more important things to spend her energy on than a washed-up pilot who’s too damn stubborn for his own good. “Can’t think of one, if I’m being honest.”

 

There’s no reason not to be, anyway. At the rate things are going, they’re all going to be laid bare to one another eventually.

 

That’s just how it works in a war like this, facing the nigh-insurmountable stakes they’re facing.

 

“Bringing Finn along with you sounds like a pretty good one,” she says, fond, because Finn is the kind of guy who can bring out that in _anyone_ , and Poe wonders how he could have ever survived as a stormtrooper. “I know I appreciate it.”

 

He finally forces himself to look at her and even manages a smile, tilted as it is, “That was more on him than me.”

 

“And yet you were still willing to bring him back to the Resistance. You took him straight to General Organa when I was—was missing,” the grin reshapes her mouth into something a lot prettier than the frown she was twisted into when she very obviously turned the conversation away from the Kylo Ren-shaped nerf in the room. “Chewbacca filled me in on everything to distract me on the way back from Starkiller. It was better than thinking of, you know, anything else.”

 

And Poe gets so caught up in looking at her, at watching her watch him, that he forgets that she asked him to get up until she shakes the hand hanging in the air between them, “Come on, Poe.”

 

He thinks back to hours ago when she shook his hand when they were formally introduced, and how the calluses on her hand somehow matched the ones on his and—

 

Poe takes his shaking hand out from under the blanket and grabs hers again, doesn’t think about how it feels as he lets her help him out of the banquette. For the first time in a long time, he feels everyone one of his thirty-two years, and here’s this girl, at least a decade younger than he is, carefully leading him into the open space in the middle of the galley.

 

She drops his hand and faces him, but her hand doesn’t go far—she places it on his blanket-covered shoulder and pushes down, and Poe really does _not_ need to add thinking about the way her hand feels against him to the list of impossible things running through his mind, “Come on,” she says, either unaware of or ignoring the ridiculous things running through his mind. “Sit down.”

 

Glancing down at the deck between their feet, Poe looks at Rey through his lashes, eyebrow arched in question. She rolls her eyes and at the very edge of his peripheral vision, he sees her cross one ankle over the other in preparation for doing the thing she just asked him to do, “It’s not that complicated. Sit.”

 

She’s not going to let this go, which surprises him in no way.

 

So, he does as she does, but he’s a lot less graceful about it, lets out a groan at the way something protests in the general area of his lower spine, and it’s echoed by the popping in his knees that’s happened ever since he had a bad crash about a decade ago. Gritting his teeth, he contorts his legs into a semi-crosslegged position to match the one Rey easily shifts into.

 

This really hasn’t been his week.

 

Once he’s settled, he plops his hands on his knees, ready to wait for Rey to make the next move, because all _he_ wanted was to spend the night sitting in the corner and wallowing in his misery.

 

But, of course, she has some plan in mind, and she scuttles forward until her bent knees press into the tops of his shins. Then, she’s reaching out and covering his hands with hers, squeezing his fingers before she turns them over, so his palms face the ceiling, “Close your eyes,” she says, but doesn’t do the same.

 

Instead she looks down at their hands, and she traces her finger over one of the lines on his palm before she slides both palms over his until the pads of her fingers rest on his wrists and—

 

Well, this is an inconvenient way to try to quietly keep having a panic attack while he goes through the motions of this little experiment.

 

But he doesn’t make any attempt to shift away from her, “I do know what meditating is, and sitting and thinking about all the shit in my head is the _other_ last thing I need to do right now.”

 

“Did I say that’s what we’re doing? Shut up and close your eyes.”

 

He can’t help but huff a laugh through his nose and finally does as she so nicely asks.

 

“Okay,” his eyes are closed now, and he doesn’t much like what he sees, but when Rey gently presses her fingers into his skin, he thinks about her sitting in front of him, and how pale she is even after growing up in the harsh-bright desert, and the way she must look now that she’s got her eyes closed too. “Now what?”

 

“Tell me about going to hyperspace in an X-wing.”

 

“What about it? You know what it’s like.”

 

Rey makes this noise in the back of her throat that sounds like she’s one combative comment away from strangling him, and while he can’t see the look on her face, doesn’t know her well enough to be able to imagine what it might look like, he’s still pretty sure it’s one he’d like to see more often.

 

“In the Falcon, but she’s huge. Strip her down and you can fit your—fit _an_ X-wing in the cargo bay,” he swallows hard at the way she shifts to the general thought of a bird, and not _his_ starfighter, because he doesn’t have one anymore. Black One is dust in the stars somewhere between D’Qar and Crait. “What’s it like in something small like an X-wing? I’ve never flown anything like that.”

 

“Says the woman who flies the Falcon _like_ an X-wing.”

 

“Humor me.”

 

Her eyes are closed, but she’s _definitely_ rolling her eyes at him.

 

Poe takes as deep a breath he can manage and throws himself into thinking about better times in his cockpit, the first time he took Black One out for a spin around the Mirrin System before he and the rest of Rapier Squadron answered General Organa’s call and defected to the Resistance, “It’s a jolt,” he thinks about the first time he launched into hyperspace out of a sim. “They don’t tell you about it when you’re training. My mother didn’t even tell me about it when she used to run us around the ruins of Base One, back home on Yavin IV.”

 

“You’re from Yavin IV? Where the first Rebellion was based?”

 

“Yeah, my parents built a ranch out there after they mustered out. I wasn’t even three.”

 

“What’s it like there?”

 

He racks his mind for the few non-Jakku worlds she could have seen, and remembers that she was—well, anyway, he does think of one, “It’s like Takodana, all the green, but more jungle than forest and a lot more humid. Rains non-stop in the summer.”

 

“Really?” She sounds giddy, but then again, she’s never lived through the oppressive, sticky deluge that are Yavinese summers. 

 

But since she’s never lived through anything but desert and fighting to survive, he might as well tell her about it.

 

Their conversation skitters back and forth between the worlds he’s seen and the finer points of piloting a starfighter, and then tapers off after a while—at one point, the blanket slips off his shoulder, but before he has the chance to extricate his hand from hers, Rey is sliding her hand off his wrist and grabbing it for him. She replaces the blanket and brushes the back of her hand over his shoulder before she drops it back to his palm.

 

Eventually, during one of those peaceful, wordless lulls, Poe slowly opens his eyes, feels a little less like the weight of everything is pressing down on his sore shoulders. He takes the moment to take Rey in, how her eyes are still closed and the muscles in her jaw are loose and unbothered, how the sound of her breathing is an even, calm counterpoint to the rumbling of the ship’s engines beneath the deck they’re sitting on.

 

Taking her in, he’s not sure why it takes so long to realize that, this whole time, Rey’s missing the long sleeves that he’s seen her wear every other time he’s run into her, and he can only imagine that it skipped his usually-observant mind because he’s been a little busy thinking about a thousand other things.

 

But his brain decides that this is an _important thing_ for him to take note of now, because there’s a scar on her arm that catches his attention, especially since they’re sitting and basically holding hands, her palms a light but firm grounding weight on his.

 

And sure, she has a ton of scars scattered over freckled skin that she somehow managed to hide from the worst of Jakku’s searing sun, but the one scar Poe realizes he’s so fixated on is just above her wrist on the outside of her arm, and it’s jagged, long and—

 

And it looks like it’s self-inflicted.

 

Before he realizes what he’s doing, he turns his hand around hers and runs his thumb over the mark, and Rey makes this short, tiny gasp in the back of her throat as her eyes open too.

 

“When I was a child,” she begins, the words sounding thick in her mouth, and she shivers when he smooths his thumb over the scar again, like he can make it fade through the sheer force of his will. “Unkar Plutt put a tracker in my arm so he would always know where I was, because he had better things to do than spend his time looking after a scrawny, abandoned girl-child. I dug it out when I decided to leave, because trying things on my own and maybe dying sounded better than spending any more time working for him than I had to. It took me a while to figure out how to do it, but I found a piece of glass from an old TIE near one of the Star Destroyers, and I hid it in my shirt until it was dark, and I could get away,”

 

She doesn’t let go of his hand, waves her elbow to point out a spot in her side, by her hip, “I accidentally cut myself with it, so I have a scar there too.”

 

Tasting bile in the back of his throat at the thought of this happening to a _child,_ Poe runs his thumb over the scar again, over and over as he stares down at it, lost in the thoughts buzzing through his overtired mind to the point where he really doesn’t think at all. Rey seems content to let him keep it up as long as he wants, and he does want, watches her watch the way his thumb moving over her skin makes the scar on the back of his hand shift, curve a little to the side. It’s about the same size, but unlike hers, it’s smooth and quite perfect, as far as knife-scars go.

 

Because what happened to him didn’t involve taking a piece of TIE debris and using the sharp edge to dig the tiny tracker out of her skin.

 

Kriff, how the hells did this girl survive the desert wastelands on her own for _fifteen years_?

 

Concussed and battered and _tortured_ , he could only make it hours before he was pleading with the Force to be rescued and returned to civilization, and he’s supposed to be the professional.

 

“I did what I had to do,” Rey startles his focus away from her arm, and when he looks at her, she makes another one of those sheepish shrugs. “Couldn’t help but hear that one, I’m sorry.”

 

Poe takes a deep, shuddering breath, but wordlessly forgives the accident.

 

And then his brows furrow at a thought that flashes through his mind.

 

“Can you hear _everyone_ on this ship right now?”

 

Rey’s eyes slide away from his, and when she tries to pull her hands away, Poe stops her with a gentle squeeze of her wrists, settles his fingertips on her pulse like she did, “Some are louder than others,” she finally says. “Leia tried to help me block it out, but it’s not easy. I’ve never been around this many people for so long.”

 

“You’re learning to block?”

 

Shrugging a shoulder, she nods, “I guess.”

 

“Can someone who’s _not_ Force sensitive learn too?”

 

At that, she finally looks back at him, and he shrugs at the question in her eyes, “It can’t hurt, right?”

 

A slow smile blooms over her face, before finally, she nods, “No, it can’t hurt.”


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So, Jedi can lift mountains and climb trees?" He asks, surprised as ever that his voice is steady and how easy it is to speak.
> 
> Rey sits back on the branch, meets his gaze and rolls her eyes, "It was not a mountain," she mutters something under her breath after that, and it sounds like she may be cursing the ghost of Luke Skywalker.
> 
> Part of him wants to ask, but she shakes her head and goes on before he has the chance, "I used to scavenge the bays of massive Star Destroyers, remember? Climbing is the only way to get up to the parts that would give me the most portions."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, thank you, thank you times a million for the wonderful reaction to chapter one, be it comments of kudos or incoherent screeching on Tumblr or all of the above! I love it all! 
> 
> Here is chapter two! While I was researching (see: trying to find info on Wookieepedia before I threw my hands in the air and went back to writing), I...figured that this was a somewhat accurate roster of non-dead pilots? Honestly, it doesn't matter, but yeah, I'm running on the assumption that pilots like Pava and Snap, et al didn't die in TLJ because they went on some other mission or escort or something before the Dreadnaught showed up at D'Qar.
> 
> But also, I just do what I want. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 167 
> 
> “You can’t just turn into a bat and fly away when you don’t want to deal with things!” 
> 
> “Watch me!”

**A Second Time**

Reuniting with Blue Squadron is amazing—not just because they bring in a fleet of much-needed X-wings and supplies from their nigh cowardly, soft-spoken allies hiding out Force-knows-where.

 

Those people are going to have to take a stand—and soon—if the galaxy is going to have a chance at stopping Kylo Ren and whatever plans he has for the First Order, now that Snoke is dead and he’s in charge.

 

But for now, Blue Squadron is back, and it’s good.

 

It’s so good.

 

And it’s all amazing until the moment Poe remembers that Jessika Pava, his wing-mate and friend and the woman he’s hugging so hard he’s probably doing damage to a rib or two, lost her girlfriend in a devastating battle against the First Order that _he_ led during the outbound from D’Qar.

 

He, former-Commander Poe Dameron, Resistance upstart pilot, led Paige Tico right to her death, and yeah, Jess knows she’s gone and she went down fighting—the way they’d all prefer to go if they’re not going to make it through the war and they have to pick a way to go out, because once, after a really bad mission, they all got incredibly drunk off some unlabeled bottle Nien Numb had stashed away in his bunk and _picked_ —but Jess _doesn’t_ know that she’s gone because of the choices _he made_.

 

When that realization really sinks in, it’s hard to not jump out of her just as firm grip, but the Force shines down upon Poe _for once, finally_ , because Jessika slides away from him to get swept up into an even bigger hug from C’ai Threnalli.

 

Poe’s not going to say he’s jealous, since all he is is happy he doesn’t have to face Jessika and his failings for a few minutes, but also—

 

C’ai gives _really_ good hugs.

 

But if he can’t get a good hug out of all this, he _can_ get a bit of a break from the throng of pilots and Rebels and has a chance to survey the reunions taking place—Leia, a handful of administrative soldiers and ground troopers, Rey and Rose and Finn and their trio of guardian droids all mingling with what remains of their starfighter corps in the middle of a forest on a world so small it doesn’t even rate a name.

 

Pava, Snap and Kare, Iolo, Ziff and Bastian.

 

Six more pilots for the cause.

 

Just six.

 

Seeing the once small but dedicated Resistance reduced to this, to a handful of people far outnumbered by the trees—it’s almost painful, and somehow _worse_ than taking stock of a group small enough to fit in the belly of the Millennium Falcon, a group that numbered in the hundreds not even twenty-four standard hours before arriving on and subsequently leaving Crait.

 

It’s so painful he almost wants to run, but this isn’t something Poe can just _escape_ , not if he’s serious about taking his place amongst their new Rebellion leadership. Which he is. He definitely is.

 

He has to be.

 

By the time Jessika reaches Rose—for the second time, because Rose was the first one she saw when she jumped out of her starfighter, taking the stairs down to her two at a time in that way Poe used to rib her about, because of that one time she broke her leg trying to pull off the stunt on a rare night so many months and a million years ago when the squadron had a chance to let loose and get up to some drunken shenanigans for fun reasons, long before everything went to hell.

 

Jess wraps the tiny mechanic up in her arms and they sob together, and it hurts so much that Poe can’t stand to watch it, but he does. At the very least, he owes that to Paige. To Paige and the hundreds of other Resistance fighters who died during the bombing run.

 

The list is nearly endless, and he knew each and every one of them.

 

His eyes sting, but he is _not about to lose it_ , not here, not now, and he nearly jumps out of his skin when someone brushes up against his side.

 

And it’s Rey, because of course it’s Rey.

 

It’s Rey, who doesn’t say a word, doesn’t even _look_ at him. She just stands at his shoulder with her hands clasped behind his back, mirroring his stance, but probably not mirroring the force of the way his hands are gripping one another. None of the Rebels milling around seem to notice them, or the way he sniffs and drops his gaze to Jess and Rose’s feet, a happy medium between looking at them like he knows he should, and not looking, because he _can’t_.

 

Not far from where he’s standing, he sees Snap hanging off Kare’s back, his arms slung around her neck as they talk nearly in sync with Finn, and Poe almost jumps out of his skin when Rey shifts. At first, it’s just the slightest change in the angle of the foot closest to his, but then it’s the rest of her body, tilting just slightly closer to his right side.

 

After what might be a moment of hesitation, but also might not, she moves her hand, and even though all she does is wrap her fingers around his wrist, it feels like a punch to the gut.

 

It’s all he can do to stay upright, stay composed, especially when General Organa comes up to Jessika and Rose and places her hands on their shoulders as she speaks with them.

 

Rey slides her hand down, nudges at his fingers where they’re still in a death-like grip as he squeezes his hands together. When he finally releases them—the tips tingling as blood rushes back to where he’d been cutting off his circulation in the self-soothing habit he thought he broke out of when he started at the Academy—she doesn’t wrap her fingers around his for longer than a heartbeat before she slides her hand further down, so his fingers can curl around her wrist.

 

He still doesn’t dare look at her, but hums through the lump in the back of his throat and wonders why she’s doing this, and he wonders all the way until he realizes he can feel the steady thrumming of her pulse against his index finger and thumb, and it’s not entirely unlike the way they sit when she’s trying to distract him through the strangest form of Jedi meditation he’s never heard of.

 

But it is a hell of a lot easier to focus on her pulse, even as he watches Jessika wipe her tear-stained face on the loose sleeve of her flight suit, while her other hand is buried in Rose’s hair to keep her pressed tight to her shoulder. She says something he can’t—nor wants to—hear to General Organa, something that makes them share a small, watery smile.

 

The roaring in his ears and general feelings of discomfort continue to mount as his stomach twists, and his chest is so tight breathing feels like it’s killing him as much as it is keeping him alive, and this might be it.

 

He debates how bad it might look to remove himself from the reunion, but he’s so emotionally charged and he can’t believe Leia hasn’t picked up on it by now—or maybe she _can_ and is letting him make the decision for himself.

 

Oh.

 

Yeah, that’s probably it.

 

Poe twists his wrist and wraps his free hand around Rey’s, holds it there for too many heartbeats to count before he tugs her off his other hand.

 

When he lets her go, Rey doesn’t say anything, and he’s both surprised and not surprised when she lets him step away without a word.

 

Poe thanks every entity out there that’s _finally_ listening to him that his footsteps are steady and slow as he walks away, out of the clearing and into the forest they’re going to be staying in over the next few days, while they determine the best place to establish a new base. From the short conversation he’s had so far with General Organa about it, she has a plan, and there’s something about that plan that’s setting him on edge, but he doesn’t know why.

 

Then again, he’s been on edge pretty much constantly since the remains of the Resistance rushed into the belly of the Millennium Falcon, Luke Skywalker himself somehow giving them the chance to escape Kylo Ren and the First Order.

 

Either way, he’s not going to ask. She’ll tell him when she’s good and ready to.

 

There’s not many places he can go—the world they’re on borders closer to uncharted than charted, and he’s not in the mood to deal with the great many dangerous beasts that may or may not populate the region they’re in.

 

A region covered in a bunch of tall trees.

 

Fortunately, Poe grew up alongside a giant, mystical tree, which he would climb and hide amidst the branches when he wanted to avoid his chores in favor of pouring through old starfighter manuals or histories of the Rebellion his parents fought for.

 

So, he climbs.

 

These trees here aren’t as easy to hide in as the one back home is. They have thick branches, but not much by way of leaves for cover, though they’re just as tall and sturdy. Poe climbs to a branch high enough off the ground that he can get down and help in case of an emergency, but still far enough away that no one’s going to bother him while he works through his shit.

 

But sitting in a tree with only his thoughts for company means it’s almost impossible to do more than sit and wallow and definitely _not_ clear his mind or disassociate from all the misery, so Poe drums his fingers against his thighs over and over and stares at the rock’s two suns as they blaze a path across the violet-blue sky.

 

It’s not a sky he’s seen on many worlds, the way it’s both violet and dark blue at the same time, depending on the way he tilts his head or narrows his eyes or concentrates too hard on one color or the other.

 

The gentle sounds of something scraping against bark brings him out of his thoughts a little, and Poe realizes that not only are the suns much closer to the other side of the horizon than they were the last time he paid attention to their location, but someone is climbing up to him.

 

It had better not be whatever creatures that are native to this planet.

 

He is _not_ in the mood.

 

Digging one hand into the bark by his hip, he tilts to the side and watches Rey dig her fingers into the thick scales of bark he himself climbed. She swings up onto a branch a few yards below his, straddles it and runs her hands through her curling hair and catches her breath.

 

Of course she comes without asking if he wants the company, because social niceties and subtlety do not mix with Rey, which is just as refreshing as it can be frustrating. He really doesn’t like her seeing him like this, and yet, she is the one who does _every time_.

 

“So, Jedi can lift mountains _and_ climb trees?” He asks, surprised as ever that his voice is steady and how easy it is to speak.

 

Rey sits back on the branch, meets his gaze and rolls her eyes, “It was not a _mountain_ ,” she mutters something under her breath after that, and it _sounds_ like she may be cursing the ghost of Luke Skywalker.

 

Part of him wants to ask, but she shakes her head and goes on before he has the chance, “I used to scavenge the bays of _massive_ Star Destroyers, remember? Climbing is the only way to get up to the parts that would give me the most portions.”

 

Hells.

 

The more Rey lets slip about her life on Jakku, the more he _despises_ the people who abandoned her to an existence in the desert. What could have possibly been worth that?

 

Poe tries to keep the wince off his face and sits back against the trunk, looks back out to the sky.

 

He has no right to go digging into her history, even if it’ll take some of the pressure about thinking of his own.

 

But if Rey wants to talk about him, it’s up to her to start.

 

Apparently, she does want to, because after she’s done catching her breath, Rey stands on the branch—Poe’s heart may or may not startle to a stop—and she hops the rest of the way to the branch he’s on, breaking his view of the endless horizon as she straddles it, the tips of her boots brushing against his calves.

 

Oddly enough, it does more to ground him than anything else he’s tried to do since Blue Squadron flew in.

 

Poe breathes out a long, drawn out sigh, mostly so he can take those extra few seconds to think about the best way to ask the question running through his mind, and he finally settles on what’s probably—what’s hopefully—the least rude option, “What are you doing up here?”

 

“You were screaming into the void again,” she says simply, and this time Poe can’t hold back the wince.

 

“Thought I was getting better at blocking.”

 

She shrugs, “It takes time. I could do with the break anyway.”

 

“What were you doing?” He asks, because it’s a million times better than talking through the shit in his head.

 

“Routine maintenance on the Falcon’s hyperdrive. Chewie said he’d finish it off,” she breaks off, and her cheeks go pink as she drops her gaze to her fingers, where she’s picking at the thick flakes of bark. “Or, well, he yelled at me to get the hell off my own ship because I kept getting distracted and he was sure I’d break something important Like myself.”

 

Poe winces again, “Sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” she shrugs without looking at him. “At least he didn’t call me a _hairless baby rat_ this time.”

 

At that Poe’s brows hike to his hairline, and Rey just shrugs again, busies herself with shifting a bit on the branch so their knees brush, “Leia says there are worse things than being adopted by a geriatric Wookie. And then _he_ said something about being too old to put up with her nonsense. I left them arguing about some mods Han did to the hyperdrive a couple decades ago, which I guess is better than them being sad about him.”

 

“A couple decades?” Poe can’t help but ask as he does some math in his head.

 

Rey turns her head, off in the direction of the camp, “I guess. I didn’t stick around long enough to ask for specifics.”

 

But she doesn’t need to, because Poe remembers exactly when those modifications were made.

 

Years ago, the Organa-Solo clan, which included a young boy about to enter into his uncle’s Jedi academy, traveled to Dameron Ranch on Yavin IV to celebrate the late Shara Bey’s birthday. Poe distinctly remembers running around the Falcon’s cargo bays with—with Leia’s son, before he went off on his own to inspect the old Sith carvings on the Massassi temple and scared the ever-living crap out of his mother, which probably should have served as a bigger warning sign than anyone took it to be.

 

And while that was happening, Han was busy pointing out those modifications to Kes.

 

Poe opens his mouth to fill in the gaps, but that would involve bringing up a specter in both their memories that he’s pretty sure Rey wants to think about _even less_ than he does.

 

So, maybe it’s best not to bring _any_ of that up.

 

Ever.

 

“Are you going to talk about it?” Rey pipes up, and Poe realizes that he’s probably been quiet and considering for longer than is conversationally acceptable.

 

At least she respects him enough not to go fishing for the answers through his head herself.

 

“Definitely not,” he blurts.

 

“Then do you want to explain the galactic standard calendar to me?”

 

“Sure. Wait—the _what_?”

 

Rey huffs, and it stirs one of the curls lying across her forehead, “All I ever used to know was that when the sun rose, it was time to go out and scavenge, and when it set, it was time to sleep,” she says, like her existence on Jakku was reasonable, which it really, _really_ never was, and one day Poe is going to show her his home on Yavin IV, and if he has to dedicate the rest of his life to showing her what it really means to live, the so be it.

 

That feeling, the one where it’s like he’s been stabbed in the gut and then the knife twisted around in his insides, only gets worse at the heady, sobering thought, and the even more sobering realization that he _means_ what he thinks, and he wants to be the one who does this for her.

 

Fortunately, Rey seems too focused on the mysteries of the way most people keep time to pick up on _those_ thoughts swirling around his mind, because he knows she’d never be able to keep it off her face if she knew.

 

“But now,” she goes on. “People just _assume_ that I know how to keep galactic standard time, and I can’t just _tell_ them I don’t know what they’re talking about, because they all look at me like I’m this all-knowing _magical super-Jedi_ or something that BB-8 found in the desert,” she grunts, scrubs a hand over her face. “Rose said that she and I were going to go on a supply run with Finn next Zhellday, but I don’t know _when_ Zhellday is. I didn’t even know _what_ a Zhellday was until BB-8 explained it to me, but then it got into an argument with R2-D2 about—honestly, I don’t even know what it was about, but R2 was very insistent that BB-8 explain itself to C-3PO, and I got out of there before I got roped in to mediate.”

 

Poe laughs, but then breaks off and clamps his mouth shut, because it really isn’t something people should expect Rey to just _know_. It’s not her fault she never learned it, and it’s _really not funny_.

 

“You _are_ allowed to laugh, you know. I do know that I don’t know things that everyone else does,” Rey leans forward and nudges her knuckles against his knee. “Anyway, I’d much rather you do that than sulk about things not under your control.”

 

There’s nothing to do but sober at that and feel that pitting in his chest again—like someone took his still-beating heart and crushed it into a million tiny pieces like the _Raddus_ is after Holdo—

 

_Stop it, Dameron_.

 

Swallowing hard, he leans back against the tree trunk, looks out through the sea of trees and the stars blinking out into existence as the suns disappear, “This one really is on me. No way around it.”

 

He shuts up after that, and Rey waits it out for a while before she blows out a long, slow breath through her nose, “Fine, we don’t have to talk about it. Just explain how this calendar thing works before someone comes up and expects me to know how many days there are in a month.”

 

“So, so you know where months are?” He asks, mostly to figure out where to start.

 

Rey levels him with a pointed look, “Probably not. Is it like a season?”

 

“Not really,” he breaks off, tilts his head. “Jakku has seasons?”

 

“Not really,” Rey counters with a snort that verges more on adorable than it does on derisive. “It’s hot and sandy, and there’s risk of dying of dehydration, or it’s _really_ _hot_ and sandy, and there’s a much higher risk of dying of dehydration. Every year or two, we might get a few weeks of lightning storms, where it’s really hot and sandy, and there’s an extremely high risk of dying from dehydration _and_ electrocution.”

 

Poe blinks, gapes at her, “You really grew up in a hell.”

 

“One of many throughout the galaxy, I’m sure.”

 

After that prim comment, Rey holds her hands out and Poe places his palms on hers, lets her slide her hands forward against his so their fingers lightly settle on one another’s pulses. Like it usually is, Rey’s pulse is a lot calmer than his, and Poe can only imagine how distracting it is for Rey to have to try to focus while his heart hammers out of his chest.

 

Closing his eyes, Rey pushes on his palms until the backs of his hands rest on the tops of his knees, and Poe shifts forward a little so he doesn’t have to stretch too far to reach her, “So, there are ten months in a standard year,” he starts, because he has no idea where a person really should go about explaining the calendar, doesn’t even remember how _he_ learned it, because thinking about growing up conjures fonder memories about the rest of his life on Yavin IV, learning to fly his mother’s A-wing. “Seven weeks in a month, and five days in a week.”

 

“And it’s supposed to be the same on every world?”

 

She sounds skeptical, and it’s not like she’s wrong.

 

Poe shrugs, knows she feels it in the way their hands shift, “Kind of? It’s based on the calendar from Coruscant, and it was voted as the standard back during the old Republic days. I guess the Emperor didn’t care enough to change the calendar when he took over, and make every day Empire Day, or something,” he snorts.

 

“I’m going to pretend I understood any of that.”

 

“We can add Republic history to the list of things to fill you in on,” Poe’s fingers twitch against the fine bones in her wrist, and he draw his index finger over the fleshy part of her palm in reassurance, because it’s not _bad_ that she doesn’t know this, it’s really not. “And those five days in the week have names, which is what Rose was talking about. Zhellday is the fourth day of the week. There’s Primeday, the worst day of the week, because I’ve never met anyone who likes the start of the week, then Centaxday, Taungsday, and Benduday.”

 

Rey hums, and he hears her mouth the days of the week under her breath before she asks, “Do those seven weeks have names?”

 

“Nah, they’re just weeks.”

 

“And is that it?”

 

“No,” he laughs, and she flicks at his palms. “Can’t forget fete weeks for the New Year, Festival of Life, and Festival of Stars. That one’s my favorite. When I was a kid, Dad and I went to Chandrilla and got to stay at the Mothma Estate for a week. It was _awesome_.”

 

“Wait, the galaxy has _weeks_ dedicated to celebrating?”

 

Poe’s never really thought of it that way, “Pretty much.”

 

“If I spent that long not working back on Jakku, I’d probably be dead.”

 

It’s not like she’s wrong.

 

But before Poe can point out, for what’s maybe the millionth time, that Jakku is _not_ representative of the rest of the somewhat civilized universe and that it’s almost physically painful to think of the reprehensible way she grew up, a series of imploring bleeps echoes up from the forest floor.

 

He opens is eyes and for that first moment of reorientation is taken aback at how dark it’s gotten, how the suns have completely slipped beyond the horizon, turning the sky a deep plum, but the line between sky and treetops glows faintly violet.

 

It’s pretty.

 

Rey leans to the side to investigate the source of the sound and Poe’s heart stops at just how far she throws her upper body. On instinct, he tightens his grip on her wrists, lest she fall out of the damn tree and breaks herself, and then where would the Rebellion be? Screwed. That’s where they’d be. Even more screwed than they already are.

 

“Hi BB-8,” she calls down to the base of the tree, where yes, BB-8 is rolling around through the dirt, zig-zagging around the roots. She tightens her grip on Poe’s hand in answer, leans a little further down and laughs under her breath at the undignified sound that climbs from the back of Poe’s throat.

 

BB-8 chirps its worry about them having been gone so long, and something about Poe having missed not one but two meals, which isn’t any healthier than trying to subsist on ration packs, and since Rey’s hands are currently occupied, she shakes her head, “Everything’s fine, we’re just discussing a couple things.”

 

[Designation: Classified Friend Rey, Designation: Best General Ever Organa wants to know if you and Designation: Best Friend and Master Poe are available to attend a briefing at 2200 hours to discuss plans to relocate to a new, permanent Rebel base.]

 

“Yeah buddy,” Poe shakes his head when Rey turns to him in question at the new identifiers. “We’ll be back at camp soon.”

 

[Okay, Designation: Best Friend and Master Poe! See you soon Designation: Classified Friend Rey!]

 

BB-8 toddles off back in the direction of camp, whistling a cheerful song Poe taught it during one of their first long-distance missions to the Outer Rim when he was still with the NRDF.

 

Poe shifts off the tree trunk a little bit, takes some of the pressure off his lower back, and when it twinges he realizes that he probably shouldn’t have spent the last—Force knows how long he’s been up in this tree, really—few hours sitting on such an unforgiving surface, “We should probably head back.”

 

With a nod, Rey detangles their hands, a smirk twisting across her mouth, “Race you down there?”

 

Before Poe has a chance to think about what she asked, Rey gives him another kriffing heart attack when she _flings_ herself onto the nearest branch below them, leaving him to scramble down after her, “Hey!” He barks around a laugh and a curse when he scrapes his palm in his haste. “That’s cheating!”

 

When he swings off the last branch, Rey is already standing on the dirt, not far from where the roots have flattened out, and is brushing her hands off on her tunic, “You know I’m old, right?” He grumbles and swipes his hands on his shirt, pokes at one of the scrapes on his palm, but it didn’t break the skin, so at least there’s that. “That was an unfair fight from the start, scavenger girl.”

 

Rey rolls her eyes, grabs his arm and tugs him toward camp, turns his hand and inspects his palm herself before she lets go, “You’re not _that_ old,” she snorts and nudges him in the shoulder while they walk.

 

He snorts back, shifts his steps so his shoulder bumps against hers with just about every step they take, “Tell that to my lower back.”

 

“I’m sure your back will be just fine when we need it to be.”

 

Poe glances at Rey out of the corner of her eye, but she stares resolutely ahead as they walk, a tiny smirk playing on her lips and that crinkle on the bridge of her nose that she gets when she’s amused.

 

He’s not sure what he’s supposed to say to that—because there are a _lot_ of things he can say and even more that he’s not ready to dive into—so he just bumps into her again while they walk.

 

He’ll figure it out eventually.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Going to try to keep this on an every-other-day posting, so...hopefully see y'all Monday at some point with chapter three. Just have to finish editing it first. It's going to feature a romantic walk on a beach. Kind of. Also an argument, and a little bit of Poe questioning Rey's sanity. 
> 
> It's going to be awesome.
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 167 
> 
> “You can’t just turn into a bat and fly away when you don’t want to deal with things!” 
> 
> “Watch me!”


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you," she breaks off, and he flexes his fingers around hers to encourage her to keep going. "Do you want to tell me what you think you know about the Battle of Jakku?"
> 
> He huffs another laugh, but it still hurts his deep in his chest to make the sound, "Yeah, I can do that."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thank you all so much for the reaction to the last chapter. I had NO CLUE that the hand-holding scene during the reunion with Blue Squadron would be as popular as it was, but I loved writing it and I'm so glad you all loved it too! 
> 
> Here's a...kind of lighter chapter? I mean, I think it's lighter? Like, y'all have to understand, I had little to no idea that this fic was going to be as angsty as it turned out to be until you all told me how angsty it is. Not that it's a bad thing, because it needs to be, but it's also why I'm adding another SUPER fluffy coda to the end of this fic.
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 169  
> “What happened to me last night?” 
> 
> “You thought you developed magic powers and could talk to squirrels.” 
> 
> “I definitely do not remember that.” 
> 
> “It’s okay, I got it all on video.”

**A Third Time**

It’s not until long after they come to a decision on _where_ to make their new Rebel base, and then _actually relocate to said base_ , that Poe has the chance to make a secure comm. to Kes on Yavin IV.

 

The first thing he tells his worried father is yes, he’s still alive and they’re all more or less okay—yes, even Leia, she says hi, hopes the Force tree is doing well—and the second thing Poe tells him is _where_ they’ve landed, because sure, it’s so incredibly top secret it’s not even funny, but this is something that even Leia agrees his father deserves to know.

 

And while Kes sounds like he takes it in stride over the shaky connection and the cool blue glow of R2-D2’s holo, Poe knows his father well enough to know that he’s ripped up a bit on the inside, to have to live with the knowledge that his son is now based on the world where his best friend—a man who would have been one of Poe’s many uncle’s had he survived the Infiltration, the Battle of Yavin, the rest of the Emperor’s damn war—died on this beautiful world.

 

So, the conversation could have gone a lot worse than it did.

 

But kriff, if there’s one person who takes to the new base the second they set foot on it, it’s Rey, and it’s almost enough to take Poe away from the stories he remembers his mother and father telling him when he was young, about the unsung heroes of the Rebellion.

 

 _Almost_.

 

Poe even manages to handle being on Scarif and _not_ feeling like his gut has caved in all the way until Snap and Jess and Nien get back from a reccie on the other side of the world and bring back surveillance footage the water-filled crater where the Imperial installation and Citadel Tower used to be, the recon team quadruple-checking that there isn’t anything left over from the Empire that would lure the First Order to this world.

 

Their base, made from a hollowed out Imperial TIE bay and the adjoining barracks, is far away and long enough removed from the war that there are very few references to the Empire that weren’t stripped away by time, but going over the footage with Leia and Connix and D’Acy and the rest of the New Rebellion leadership they picked up on the way to Scarif is an all too familiar punch to the gut.

 

Because the Death Star _devastated_ that side of the planet to the point that its axis has shifted in the last thirty-odd years, and if Leia’s not having flashbacks to seeing the super weapon do the same _and worse_ to Alderaan, and then to whatever it is they saw Starkiller do to the entire farking Hosnian system, then he’d eat his left boot.

 

The footage is so, so hard to look at—so much so that it comes to _very_ little surprise that Poe finds Rey waiting for him when he gets out of the meeting.

 

Since they landed, Rey’s spent just about every waking moment either staring at all the water, exploring the little islets around their base, meditating, or sparring against shadows with her staff, and all of those things are more important than he is.

 

But somehow Rey’s still leaning against the wall on the other side of the hallway from the storage room they’ve hastily converted into a conference room, Finn at her side. Their foreheads nearly touch as they talk about something in hushed whispers, only stopping when they hear the movement of the others leaving the room behind Poe.

 

When he steps into the hall, Finn breaks away from their conversation, squeezes her hand before meeting Poe in the middle, “You will never believe the intel we decrypted today,” he says in that ever-excited rush of his as he waves the datacard in question between them. “Turns out Phasma made it out of that mess alive. Rumor is she led an ambush on some friendly worlds in the Inner Rim. That woman is a _cockroach_.”

 

Poe rolls his eyes, “Sounds like her. You filling Leia in?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Go easy on her, she’s had a long afternoon.”

 

“ _I heard that Dameron._ ”

 

He grins over his shoulder and sketches a sloppy salute in Leia’s direction before he pats Finn on the shoulder and pushes him in the direction of the conference room.

 

The door shuts behind him with a quiet click, and Poe looks beyond the place where Finn was standing and takes in Rey’s presence, how she’s smiling off at something down the hall, her arms crossed loosely over her chest and the fingers of one hand tapping rhythmically against her bare, scar-and-freckle-dusted arm. She ditched the sleeves in deference to Scarif’s near-oppressive humidity, and it’s a bit distracting, to see that much skin on display _all the time_.

 

But it’s a good distraction.

 

Poe knows he’s going to have a reckoning to face—and _soon_ —especially with the way he can’t help but seek her out whenever they’re in the same room, how he wraps his fingers around her wrist and counts the beats of her pulse sometimes when they sit together in the mess hall, his pilots chattering around them, how she looks at him and _sees_ him, sometimes better than even his old flight crew did.

 

Yeah, he’s going to have to do something about that.

 

She’s still gazing at something down the hall, but when Poe looks in the same direction, all he sees is open space and a wall that used to have an old Imperial insignia hanging on it, that is now covered by hammer-marks and a giant, spray-painted smiley face, but he knows she’s definitely aware of the fact that he’s standing there and watching her.

 

“Hey there.”

 

Rey finally looks at him, shifts so she’s leaning both shoulders against the wall instead of one, “Hi,” she pushes off, takes the half-step she needs to meet him in the middle. “Figured you might want to talk about what happened in there.”

 

His brows knit together, because last he knew—see: when they talked over breakfast—she was busy meditating today, focusing on whatever it is Jedi are supposed to focus on, and not on things like _him_ , “I know you couldn’t tell from me.”

 

It’s true.

 

He’s gotten much better at shielding his thoughts over the last few weeks. Not because he _wants_ Rey to leave him alone, but she has a lot more things to do than worry over his mental state every time he gets the littlest worked up.

 

He’s a pilot, _of course_ he gets worked up.

 

Or, well, he used to be a pilot, back when they had enough birds to go around.

 

It’s fine.

 

They can manage without him.

 

Rey smirks like she knows a secret, which makes these little lines form over the bridge of her nose, and it’s _adorable_ , “You _are_ doing a lot better. The only reason I know you’re stressed right know is from your face. A career as a spy is clearly wasted on you.”

 

He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t take the bait, “So, who was it?” He asks instead. “Snap? Kare? Jess? It was Jess. Now that’s a woman who can’t keep her mouth shut for the life of her.”

 

“No, no, and no.”

 

Poe’s brows hike to his hairline, “Oh really? Then how’d you find out?”

 

That secretive smile widens, which makes the lines on her nose smooth out, and she glances over her shoulder before taking his arm and tugging him down the hall, toward the flight deck, “Come on. I’ll tell you about it outside. I want to see the water do that weird thing it does when it gets dark.”

 

“Bioluminescence is not weird,” Poe snorts, like they haven’t been arguing about this since they first landed and Rey spent a solid ten minutes gaping at all the water surrounding the tiny island chain they’re on, and how it glows neon green and blue after sunset. “The weirdest part of this planet is that it doesn’t have a moon.”

 

“Not all planets have moons,” she says, entirely reasonably, like she is _every time_ she says those words in that order.

 

“And while not all planets have bioluminescent fungi in their oceans, this one does,” he counters, _again_ , and they end up in the same stalemate they always do, needling back and forth with neither argument gaining much footing as they skirt the activity in the hangar, wave at Rose and BB-8 where they’re working on repairs on one of their new-to-the-Rebellion-but-still-about-a-decade-past-its-prime transports, and head out through the side access hatch.

 

Poe follows Rey up the sandy slope and across the beach, heading to the shimmering water that the sun is setting into.

 

With the abrupt way this world shifts from dark to night, sometimes Poe thinks it’s like the water—because there really is so much of it—pulls at the last of the sun’s energy, and that’s what charges the blue-green glow of whatever fungi live among the salt crystals, so it glows so bright it’s almost searing and a little hard to look at until it gets a little later at night.

 

There’s a lot of things on Scarif that are hard to look at.

 

But sometimes, when the sun dips away and the stars glitter up above and the water glows, it’s hard to believe that anything bad could happen on a world like this.

 

It’s hard.

 

Poe shoves his hands in the pockets of his fatigues and follows Rey down to the water line, where she drops as gracefully as she always does to a crosslegged seat on sand that’s not still wet, but straddles that line where it is and where it’s just damp enough that a thin, crunchy layer of drier sand forms over the top, making their boot-prints stick in better than they do higher up by the palm trees that edge around the entrance to the base.

 

He walks up next to her and stops close enough that his ankle brushes against her bent knee, looks out at the water, where the ripples jump and flare bright blue and bright green and swirl together, glowing brighter and brighter as the sky starts its transition from deep blue to the inky navy of space and stars.

 

When he looks away from the water, it’s to the sky, and while it’s still too bright to see the stars that make up the Yavin system, he knows where it is—it’s always the first thing he picks out amongst the stars wherever he’s settled, be it the NRDF base on Mirrin Prime, the tiny base the Resistance first worked out of on a tiny world in the Outer Rim, definitely D’Qar, and even Crait, for the few seconds before the landed and started running.

 

He always knows where home is.

 

“Hey.”

 

Poe looks down to find Rey gazing up at him, a curious arch to her brows as her hair starts to frizz in the way that she hasn’t been able to tame since they arrived on the island, and he meets her gaze with a half-smile, “What do you know, scavenger girl?”

 

“A lot of things,” Rey curves her hand around his calf, runs her thumb back and forth over the line made by the top of his boot before she reaches up and holds her hand out to him. “Sit with me.”

 

It’s not a question, but it’s never a question.

 

He faces her and sits, and Rey’s shifted so she’s hunched over a little, elbows propped against her knees and her chin on her hand. While he settles, he watches her head tilt to one side, to something in the strip of sand between them and the water, “Well?” He digs his hand into the sand by his hip and pushes it around so he feels a little less lopsided. “You going to tell me or what?”

 

Instead of answering, Rey just hums and keeps staring over at— _something, “_ Well, what do you know?” She murmurs, definitely not to him, and then she glances back over her other shoulder and speaks to, well, absolutely nothing that he can see. “Now it’s all coming together.”

 

He clears his throat to get her attention, “Rey? You with me, scavenger girl?”

 

He hasn’t been around a real Jedi in years—Ben doesn’t and will _never_ count—but they’re not always this _weird_ , are they?

 

“Rey?”

 

She blinks, looks back at him and really sees him, probably for the first time since they left base, “Oh,” she wrinkles her nose and sits up. “Sorry. I can explain.”

 

“Oh,” he echoes, more than a little sardonically, but it’s not like it matters since Rey doesn’t really understand sarcasm, like, at all. “Is that what this is?”

 

“Ever since we got here,” she smooths one hand against the sand a few inches off her knee, makes a little divot where the sand goes dark and wetter than what they’re sitting on. “I’ve been looking for something. Something that’s been calling to me for a while. For a lot longer than I first realized.”

 

She looks away from the sand, back at him, “Everything we’ve done since Crait has been leading us here.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I think this is where we win the war.”

 

Poe’s throat locks up and suddenly it’s very hard to see, so he reaches out, wraps his fingers around her wrist and curves them around the delicate bones. His calluses catch against the scars there, both self-inflicted and brought about by life on Jakku, before his fingertips finally settle on the even beat of her pulse.

 

The last threads of the waning sunlight glitter off something in the sand, and he watches Rey dig her free hand in. She takes a giant scoop in her fingers, and the little grains trail back to the beach in sticky chunks as she wiggles her fingers, tightens her grip and turns her wrist over to let the rest of the clumped grains fall.

 

When she turns it back over, there’s a small, shiny stone resting among the view scattered grains still sticking to her skin. It’s clear and polished by years in the sand, with a bit of a round lump on one side. Poe can almost see a faint line of impressions in the narrow, flat side of the pinky-sized rock that might have been an old line of carvings.

 

“That’s pretty.”

 

Rey’s eyes glitter when she looks at him, in that unrestrained way what never fails to make his heart race, “It’s not just a pretty rock. You know that, don’t you?”

 

“Really?” He reaches out, hesitates and meets her eyes, wordlessly asking permission, and when Rey nods, he does, his fingertips brushing against her palm when he takes it, turns it over in his fingers and runs his thumb over the flat side, like he can figure out what the carvings that used to be there mean through touch. “What do you think it is?”

 

“Poe, this is a piece of _kyber_.”

 

His eyes snap away from the crystal, meet hers, and then he looks at the recently-repaired handle clipped to her belt, “Like what’s in your lightsaber?”

 

Unlike the kyber in that lightsaber, which he got to hold for a few minutes before Rey finally finished fixing the damage to the housing, this crystal feels insubstantial, like it weights nothing on his palm and couldn’t possibly power something as powerful as a lightsaber, and Rey reaches out, trails her fingertip over one side, and sometimes it brushes against the grains of sand that fell on his palm, making him shiver.

 

“Not entirely,” she says, pensive like she’s in the middle of meditating, but still aware enough to talk, which she does from time to time to freak out the new pilots, because it’s funny and makes him laugh too. “The kyber crystal Anakin Skywalker found sang to me on Takodana, and I think it was Obi-Wan Kenobi who led me the rest of the way, even if I wasn’t ready to hear it at the time. This crystal sings, but it doesn’t sing for me.”

 

Wracking his mind for the names of any other Jedi from the first war does very little good—Poe knows more about the history of the Sith who built the temples back home than he knows of the rosters of Republic Jedi, what with the way the Emperor went about obliterating their names and accomplishments from every corner of the history he wanted to remake in his image—so, he shakes his head to clear the thoughts and drops the crystal back on Rey’s palm, “Dare I ask which Jedi this one sings for?”

 

“Not a Jedi,” she bites her lip around a smile, eyes sneaking off to the since again like they have since she found him after his meeting, “This one sings for Rogue One.”

 

Poe’s brows skyrocket in the direction of his hairline and his hands go _numb_ , and he gapes as Rey rolls the crystal around her fingers, “How-“

 

“Because it belonged to Jyn Erso.”

 

Finally, things go back to normal and Poe sighs, scrubs a hand over his face, “Rey, you can’t possibly know that,” he tries to be as—well, as reasonable as he can about all of this, because _none of it_ makes sense. “Leia’s the only one left in the galaxy who knew Jyn, who was _there_ the ay the Empire tested the Death Star on Scarif, and she doesn’t even know Jyn had a kyber crystal. I’ve heard her tell the story so many times, she would have mentioned it by now if she knew.”

 

Instead of protesting, Rey looks away from him _again_ , eyes sliding in the direction of some random spot on the sand to the side, “But there’s no way she _can’t_ know,” Rey counters before Poe can get even more frustrated with the weird staring thing, and she shrugs a shoulder. “But the ghosts of Rogue One are still here. Still on Scarif. They’ve been telling me the stories, and that’s how _I_ know for sure.”

 

This is impossible.

 

“What do you mean, _they’re here_? Like, actually here?”

 

Rey nods, looks over to the side like some movement caught her eye, but again, when he does the same, all he sees are the shadows around the trees and sand, “I think they stayed all this time because they knew the Rebellion would make its way back here, someday.”

 

“Here?”

 

“Yes. Here. On Scarif. The world we are currently based on.”

 

She sounds like she’s about to start laughing at him, like he _shouldn’t_ think this is all completely absurd, and Poe rolls his eyes at her, “Yeah, I figured that was what you meant. Still doesn’t make it any easier to believe,” he shakes his head, because there’s weird Jedi nonsense, and then there’s _this_. “And you’ve been what, hanging out with them?”

 

“They’re just around. Sometimes they help me train, sometimes they just watch us. I don’t know what the rules are supposed to be,” she shrugs. “But I think it’s good that they’re here. Even if you can’t see them, seeing Rogue One reminds me that even against all odds, hope finds a way. It got us this far, and it _always_ finds a way.”

 

Poe swallows hard at the lump in his throat that forms when Amilyn Holdo’s similar words echo through his mind, another name on the never-ending list of all his failures.

 

“Yeah,” he heaves a long breath, flexes the fingers he’s forgotten are still wrapped around her wrist. “Yeah, you’re right.”

 

“Also, I don’t think they’re going to move on _until_ we win.”

 

At that, at the thought of them just waiting, for _decades_ , Poe frowns, “What do you mean?”

 

“Well, Cassian has decided to stay, and where Cassian goes, the rest of Rogue One does too,” Rey breaks off and looks over her shoulder, smirks at whatever she sees. “Jyn says he’s obsessed, but Cassian insists that he’s dedicated to the cause, and that they owe it to Leia to watch over us until we win. And then they’ll find—well, they’re very happy together as they are, but when we win, they’ll move on, or whatever it is people do in the Force once they’re, well—I still don’t really know much about what happens after people become one with the Force. There’s a _lot_ about all this that I don’t know.”

 

“If there’s anyone who deserves peace by now, it’s them, and especially Cassian Andor,” he manages, voice thick as he thinks of his father and the stories Kes used to tell—Force, how is he supposed to explain this, any of this, to his father? He’ll march right down here and read Leia the riot act before bundling him back home like he did that time Poe ran away because he didn’t want to go on another one of Kes’ deep-forest survivalist marathons.

 

The thought of it makes his heart hurt.

 

“Uh,” Poe breaks off and shakes his head, because he really has no idea how he’s supposed to ask a question like this. “Are they still here?”

 

Wordlessly, Rey considers him until he twitches his fingers against her, and then she nods.

 

“Cassian too?”

 

Rey nods again, one brow quirking a bit.

 

“Like,” he shakes his head and feels like a complete idiot for even considering the words on his tongue, but forces himself to ask the question anyway. “Like where, specifically?”

 

Her other eyebrow joins the first, but Rey just wraps her fingers around the crystal and points across her body to an empty stretch of sand a few feet away.

 

Poe looks up to where Cassian’s face would be, if he could see it, “Dad uh, talks about you a lot,” is what he comes up with, sounding stupid enough talking at nothing, even without the weight of the question that he _really_ wants to know the answer too.

 

But he can’t bring himself to ask it, to ask about Shara Bey, because that would mean having Rey relay the answer to him, and he doesn’t know if he can handle that.

 

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Rey tilt her head like she’s listening, but try was he might, when he does the same all he hears is his heartbeat pounding in his ears and the slight breeze gusting across the shore.

 

“He says that being one with the Force is as weird as you think it is,” Rey breaks off with a giggle before she takes a breath and sobers. “And he is very, very proud of you. You honor every pilot who’s flown before you, and that is a legacy that will last generations.”

 

Poe chokes on his breath, hunches over and presses his hand over his eyes, “You can’t just say things like that,” he manages around a wet, raspy laugh. “That’s cheating, scavenger girl.”

 

If Rey says anything to that, Poe’s not sure he hears, not with the way blood rushes in his ears like the way the waves sound when they crash during high tide, and he squeezes his eyes shut against the way they sting at the corners, and it’s all too much to do more than try to breathe.

 

It’s all he _can_ do, until the soft touch of Rey’s fingers against the palm of his hand startles him back to where he is, sitting on the beach and almost _losing it_ , because their base is really, truly haunted and by people he _knows_ , at the very least by reputation. He can’t move his other hand away from his eyes yet, not with how his fingers pressing into the corners makes the stinging stop a little, but he lets her rest her palm against his, slides forward until she wraps her fingers around his.

 

“Do you,” she breaks off, and he flexes his fingers around hers to encourage her to keep going. “Do you want to tell me what you think you know about the Battle of Jakku?”

 

He huffs another laugh, but it still hurts his deep in his chest to make the sound, “Yeah, I can do that.”

 

With his eyes closed until it doesn’t hurt to look at her, at where they’re sitting, at the stars and the sky and the glowing bacteria floating in the water, at where Rogue One may or may not still be standing, Poe tells her what he learned about the battle, about the Imperial Destroyers and the Rebel armada, and she tells him about the X-wings and A-wings and Y-wings and TIEs she scavenged her way through while scraping together enough to make a living.

 

When he finally reaches the point where he can open his eyes, the sky has gone black and starry, and the first thing he does is pick out Yavin’s star.

 

Then he looks at Rey, at how the side of her face that’s closest to the water glows green and blue, and this time, when his breath catches, it’s in a good way, but a way he hopes she doesn’t notice.

 

She can do much better than a broken Rebel that she keeps scraping back together.

 

“You think you can eat?” She asks after a shallow growl echoes from her stomach interrupts her story about a stretch of sand and hundreds of downed Rebellion fighters.

 

Meals tend to be hit or miss with most of them on base, but not with Rey, even though she’s finally moved past the point where she eats so fast she gets sick because of the leftover worries that someone might come up and take her food.

 

Yet another reason to curse the wasteland she grew up in.

 

“I could try,” he shifts his hand a little, so his fingers are cupped around her palm, not unlike the way they clasped hands that first time on the Millennium Falcon, but also _nothing_ like that moment all those weeks ago, because he slides the side of his thumb down her palm too. “Thanks Rey.”

 

“Any time,” she squeezes his hand tight before she flips to her feet, and then uses the leverage of their grip to help him off the sand. “I mean it.”

 

Poe lifts their hands, presses her knuckles to his mouth, “I know,” he murmurs against her skin. “I know.”

 

A pair of starfighters shoot out from the base and Rey looks up, sees the flaming trails they make as they head into space for the evening’s patrol, and she leans into Poe’s side, rests the side of her head against his shoulder, “Do you miss it much? The flying?”

 

Something pinches in his chest, at the thought of getting back in a bird, at the thought of leading a team into battle again, at the thought of making the same mistakes he made before, the mistakes that doomed hundreds, and he swallows hard, “Rey, we’ve talked about this,” he grits through his teeth as he tracks the birds until they blink out of the atmosphere. “I’m in this Rebellion in any way it needs me, and right now it doesn’t need me in a cockpit.”

 

She grumbles something under her breath that he doesn’t quite catch, “No, you talked and I pretended to let you think that your reasoning made sense,” she counters, like she’s been sitting on that for a while, probably since the first time they left atmo after reuniting with Blue Squadron and he joined her in the cockpit of the Falcon instead of being in one of the birds. “ _I_ think you’re being ridiculous and it’s entirely unnecessary.”

 

“ _Rey_.”

 

“ _Poe_.”

 

Turning her, Poe cups his hands around her narrow shoulders, presses his mouth to her hairline and lets the little curling hairs there brush against his nose, “I made my choice,” she grunts through her nose, a disagreeing sound, but doesn’t say anything otherwise. “I’m doing what I have to.”

 

Rey curls the fingers of her free hand into the hem of his shirt and presses the fist still holding the crystal against his hip. She releases another breath through her nose and finally nods once, careful that she doesn’t bash the crown of her head into his nose, even though part of him thinks that’s exactly what she _wants_ to do. “I know that’s what you think,” she says, and that’s all she says for a long time. “But I’ll still stand with you.”

 

He heaves a sigh, the first one that feels like he can actually breathe again, and he wraps an arm around Rey’s shoulders, presses his mouth back to her temple and breathes her in, “Thank you Rey.”

 

She squeezes her hand tighter around his shirt, tucks in tighter to his side.

 

They’ll find a way to make it work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Han Solo yells into the void, "THAT'S NOT HOW THE FORCE WORKS!"
> 
> I scream back, "I DON'T CARE!"
> 
> This chapter is also in recognition of Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd, and the Grammy Carrie won last night for Princess Diarist, which is a book I need to get off my ass and read.
> 
> More to come, hopefully on Wednesday if I can get the last scene that I decided to write yesterday to cooperate with me.
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 169  
> “What happened to me last night?” 
> 
> “You thought you developed magic powers and could talk to squirrels.” 
> 
> “I definitely do not remember that.” 
> 
> “It’s okay, I got it all on video.”


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe huffs when she finds that spot on his ribs that makes him squirm, snatches up her finger and presses a quick kiss to her knuckle, "I know I'm not projecting."
> 
> "You don't have to with that look on your face," she frees her finger and pokes at his cheek, and it's nice to have a reminder that even now, after all these years and the trust build between them, Rey's never gone into his head without permission-either way, they don't need that. "Poe, I don't know why you're still so surprised that I want to stay with you. Of course I picked a life with you. It was the only choice to make."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I said this was going to go up Wednesday and today is not Wednesday at this moment where I currently live (but is Wednesday in other places, because that's how time works, I guess), so, SURPRISE! As always, your reactions to each chapter have just stunned me! I'm so happy you're all enjoying this heaping pile of angst. I promise I did not intend to make it as angsty as I did, but...whoops? Well, not whoops. 
> 
> As your reward, here is some NOT angst.
> 
> Yes, the reckoning is finally here. Well, kind of. You'll understand when you read it.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with it!
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 179 “The only time I’m not multitasking is when I’m sleeping. But considering how many bruises I wake up with, I probably multitask then too.”

**One Of Many Moments**

The war ends, and they live.

 

Impossibly, yes, but they live.

 

They live and they all get to choose their paths.

 

And moving back to Yavin IV after the war is probably the best decision Poe’s ever made.

 

It took years, but with peace finally secured, it’s time to go home.

 

And Poe will thank every lucky star that’s ever looked out for him that Rey agreed to come to Yavin IV too, that she wants to learn what it’s like to really live _and_ build that life with _him_.

 

It’s a blessed reprieve from live in the rest of the galaxy, which thinks Rey is the savior-with-a-capital-S, and are all too eager to have her around and available to do _magic tricks_.

 

Whenever it comes up—be it an invitation to a state event in the New-New Republic government’s capital or a request from the leaders of one of the many far-flung worlds they saved—Rey complains that she’s never going to be able to escape being famous for lifting rocks. He’s never asked why she’s so bitter about it, because it’s still a bit of a touchy subject that harkens to her few days spent with Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To.

 

Maybe one day she’ll tell him about it, but it doesn’t really matter if she never does.

 

But what’s probably the _best_ part of Rey moving to Yavin IV with him—other than that _she moved to Yavin IV with him_ —is that she _loves_ the Force tree that’s been growing like a weed in the years since Finn broke free from the First Order and found his way to her on Jakku.

 

Naturally, that makes her one of Kes’ favorite people in the entire kriffing galaxy.

 

After landing the Falcon on the pad at the ranch, he and Rey and BB-8 walked off the ship, and before Poe even had a chance to say hello to his father in person for the first time in _years_ , he’s sweeping Rey into one of the biggest bear hugs of her life. It startled her, but she’s definitely grown used to just how tactile the Dameron family is.

 

It’s not like his quirks came out of a vacuum.

 

Poe Dameron is his undoubtedly both his mother’s _and_ this father’s son.

 

Rey takes it all in stride though, settles in with more ease than either of them thought she would.

 

Sometimes, Poe’s pretty sure he’s been knocked down in the Dameron family hierarchy of importance, with BB-8 being Kes’ favorite non-human child and Rey being Kes’ favorite Jedi child—for all that she’s in her twenties and has been living as an adult since she was like, _five_ —but it’s not _that_ bad. Kes hasn’t adopted any of the village children as a replacement for him—that he knows of—so it places him solidly in third as Kes’ favorite biological child.

 

Being overshadowed at home and, well, everywhere else on Yavin IV is fine. As long as the people in his village love Rey, he’s happy, and they do. They _really_ do. But not only do they love her, but they let her live.

 

Which is much better than that sect of people who fear that Rey is just going to be _yet another Anakin Skywalker_ , despite the fact that it was Kylo Ren who _really_ tried to take on the worst part of that man’s mantle. Fortunately—if they can find _any_ fortunate in _anything_ the Emperor did—most of Anakin’s history has been purged and lost to time, which is nothing less than he deserves, even if he did make the right choice in the end.

 

There’s just nothing to forgive being so short-sighted and fearful that he killed his wife, slaughtered _hundreds_ of defenseless Jedi, mutilated his son, and tortured _his own damn daughter_.

 

It was long before he was born, but Poe still has a _lot_ of feelings about that.

 

Probably more than even Leia herself has on the matter, but she deserves to have someone angry on her behalf.

 

And fortunately, though vocal, that sect of people who fear the things that Rey can do is small enough that it’s not a problem, not here or anywhere—Poe sees twice as many marriage proposals than he does hate mail that sneaks through the security protocols on her datapad, most of which just makes her laugh more than anything else.

 

Though she has more choices than there are _stars_ , she still picked _him._

 

Yeah, he’s still working on coming to terms with that.

 

And all of this means is that there is only a small handful of people who would particularly _mind_ the sight that greets Poe as he steps out onto the back porch of his father’s house.

 

Because this is where Rey transcends from beautiful scavenger girl to _beautiful Jedi who saved the galaxy_.

 

And this beautiful Jedi is meditating like she does every afternoon, rain or shine.

 

Today though, it’s definitely _rain_.

 

It’s summer on Yavin IV and the afternoon storms drive rain down in droves, soaking everything and weighing down the leaves on the trees that surround the property. The thick leaves that sprout off the sturdy branches of the Force tree only do so much to keep Rey shielded from the sheets of water, which instead fall through in thick, heavy droplets.

 

With eyes closed and the slight smile that’s in place on her mouth when she’s truly relaxed—which appears more and more often every day removed from the war they are—Rey hovers in a cross-legged seat a few feet off the ground, above the gap in the roots that Poe has very, _very_ fond memories of cradling his growing body as he poured through his mother’s old flight manuals.

 

Through the haze of water and the protection of the canopy Rey’s meditating under, Poe sees the way the fat raindrops that roll off the leaves hover in the air around her, Rey catching each one and holding them in place until she’s surrounded by a veil of droplets that hang and spin lazily while keeping their spherical shape.

 

It’s been years since he’s been caught out in a Yavinese rainstorm—long enough that the novelty hasn’t worn off quite yet—so Poe meanders slowly across the grass, happily lets the water seep into his sweat-soaked hair and shirt, and he comes to a stop just under the edge of the canopy, where the rain slides down his back, but he doesn’t have to keep blinking water from his eyes to see Rey in front of him.

 

There’s a raindrop circling between his eyes, and Poe shifts back so he has room to poke his finger through it. He chuckles quietly when it shifts and wraps around his index finger, not entirely unlike the way his mother’s ring now sits on Rey’s.

 

When he takes another step under the canopy, the raindrops _shift_ out of his way, and even as Rey sits still in the air and breathes and almost _glows_ with whatever it is inside her that give her all that power, nothing shows on her face to indicate that she knows he’s there, other than the fact that Poe knows she _always_ know where he is.

 

Back when they were in the middle of a war and needed to keep track of everyone’s locations, lest they risk someone getting caught by the First Order without their noticing, it’s a great trick to keep up her sleeve. But when he’s trying to sneak into town to pick up her favorite sweets to surprise her in breakfast in bed?

 

Not so much.

 

Since moving to Yavin, Poe has been successful at that a grand total of once, and even then he suspects Rey was just humoring him.

 

Poe steps carefully around the roots until he’s in front of her, and other than Rey huffing a breath through her nose, she doesn’t move, not even when Poe rests his hands on the backs of hers where they’re draped loosely over her knees.

 

She doesn’t even flinch, of course she doesn’t, and a grin spreads across Poe’s face as he traces his fingertips over the lines of the veins on the backs of her hands, up and over the knobby bones of her wrists, and then back down to toy with the tips of her fingers.

 

Smoothing his thumb over her blunt nails, Poe sneaks his fingers under hers, drags his fingertips over the recently-healed burn scars on her palms from her final confrontation with Kylo Ren—the less said about that, the better—and his grin stretches further when he finally draws a reaction out of her, a minute twitching of her nose that forms those cute little lines over the bridge.

 

That twitch spreads to her fingers, and they flex around his hands for a second before she hums, clears her throat in that signal that means she’s coming back from whatever she’s been thinking about.

 

“What’s that people say about interrupting a meditating Jedi?”

 

Poe’s grin goes a little stupid, and when he tugs at her wrist a little, Rey floats over until her knees press against his stomach, “You’re the Jedi, scavenger girl, you tell me.”

 

Finally, her eyes blink open, and Rey grins at him as her blown pupils tighten up to adjust to the light that still filters to the ground through the thick blanket of clouds covering the region, “Are you finished for the day?”

 

“We made some progress on the outer walls this morning, put the tarps up before I called it,” he turns her hands over and runs his fingers over her palms until she squeezes her fingers around his to make him stop, and a short giggle escapes her closed mouth. “Forecast says this rain isn’t going to let up until late anyway, I figure the crew could use a break.”

 

Rey blinks, floats to the side so she can see over his shoulder at the curtain of raindrops all around them and the sheets of rain falling outside the Force tree’s canopy, “Oh. I must have missed that,” she shrugs and rolls her eyes at the look on his face—one of the most observant, sensitive women in the galaxy, and she doesn’t even notice when the weather changes—and then she shifts back, laces her fingers around his. “How does our house look?”

 

Like it always does when she brings it up—especially when she uses words like _our_ and _house_ —something warm spreads through Poe’s chest at the thought of the house he’s building for _them_. A place of their own, where they can build their lives together in the peace they found so hard for, because Rey—who can live anywhere in the galaxy and do anything she wants—just _wants_ to build her life with him.

 

It’s been weeks since she made her choice, but it’s still a heady thought, because it was the _last_ thing he ever prepared himself for when the war was dying down and those in the Rebellion who were ready to move on from the fight started thinking about _where_ they’d all go.

 

For some, it was an easy choice.

 

Leia, who will never truly stop fighting for pace, will now do so in the comfort of the Mothma Estate on Chandrilla, where the former chancellor long ago promised her she’d be able to live out her days in peace, with R2-D2, C-3PO, Kaydel Ko Connix, and Larma D’Acy at her side to manage her ‘Thank you Leia For Helping Save The Galaxy, _Again_ , We Promise Not To Screw It Up This Time’ appreciation tour, Finn and Rose have decided to go on a massive road trip across the galaxy, but will eventually have a place to land in one of their extra bedrooms, once said bedrooms have been built, and Jess and the rest of Poe’s pilots are headed back to their homes to be lauded as the heroes they are, and those who don’t have homes to go back to are making new ones, and the rest lost their lives to the fight, but—

 

Rey.

 

Rey wants to live with him.

 

And sometimes, Poe wakes up sure that this is all just a dream.

 

That they’re still fighting, still scraping by day after day after day, hoping beyond all hope that they’ll find a way to get the upper hand on the First Order’s forces.

 

“Hey,” Rey snaps, sharp, and she untangles one hand, pokes at his chest with one pointy finger. “Cut that out.”

 

Poe huffs when she finds that spot on his ribs that makes him squirm, snatches up her finger and presses a quick kiss to her knuckle, “I know I’m not projecting.”

 

“You don’t have to with that look on your face,” she frees her finger and pokes at his cheek, and it’s nice to have a reminder that even now, after all these years and the trust build between them, Rey’s never gone into his head without permission—either way, they don’t need that. “Poe, I don’t know why you’re still so surprised that I want to stay with you. _Of course_ I picked a life with you. It was the only choice to make.”

 

His throat goes tight and a little scratchy, “ _Rey_ ,” he rasps, leans in and tips his forehead to hers, one hand sliding around to cup around the back of her neck. “Rey, I- “

 

“I know,” she whispers, her breath ghosting against his parted mouth, and she curves her hand around his jaw, draws her thumb back and forth across his cheek. “I know, Poe.”

 

He squeezes her fingers and Rey slides her hand around his neck, tugs him in and touches her mouth to his, swallows his groan when she swipes her tongue over his lower lip. The soft slide of her tongue against his loosens the last of that feeling in his chest, and Poe grips the back of her neck, presses as close to her as he can with her still floating in the air.

 

But that’s not enough for either of them, it never is.

 

Without breaking the kiss, Poe tugs his hand free from hers and wraps his arm low around her waist, pulling her in tight with the palm splayed flat against her butt. Rey quickly picks up on what he’s thinking, and as she tilts her head to change the angle of the kiss, she uncrosses her legs and wraps them around his hips, but it’s not until she flings her arm around his shoulders, her fingertips toying against the skin barred by the loose collar of his damp t-shirt, that she stops using the Force to keep her aloft, lets him take her weight.

 

Poe stumbles a little, but catches himself before they fall into a heap of tangled limbs on the gnarled tree roots and patchy grass, and he shifts, turns them a little so he can press the lithe line of Rey’s back into the sturdy bark of the tree.

 

Distantly, Poe registers the splattering of water on the ground around them, feels a few more drops that Rey’s not shielding away from them anymore land on his shoulders and slide down the back of his neck where her fingers aren’t stroking over his exertion-flushed skin. But he has more important things to think about than the weather, like the needy whimpers that sound in the back of Rey’s throat when he digs the hand on her backside harder, and he presses tighter into the cradle of her hips.

 

When Rey strokes her fingers back and forth over the chain hanging around his neck—now holding one of his and one of Rey’s dog tags—Poe pulls away to catch his breath, but he doesn’t want to go too far from her, keeps pressing his lips back over her parted mouth and darts his tongue out to touch against hers at least once or twice or—

 

“ _Kids! Lunch is ready!_ ”

 

With a pained groan that muffles the sound of the cheery bleeps that echo Kes’ sentiments, Poe breaks away and buries his head against Rey’s neck while she gasps out a breathless giggle that sends shivers down his spine, “ _Kriff_ , we need our own place.”

 

They _really_ can’t live with his father forever.

 

It’s hard enough when their curious little droid who _definitely_ enjoys interrupting them at inconvenient times with things it deems to be _super important_ , and Poe definitely still blames the encouragement of that quirk of BB’s on a certain former stormtrooper named Finn.

 

But when his droid teams up with his father?

 

Yeah, they need to go, and soon.

 

“Well that’s up to you now, isn’t it?” Rey runs her fingers through the short hairs at the back of his neck, squeezes gently at his name, and then jolts against him when he sets his teeth into the tendon where her neck meets her shoulder. “Hey!” She smacks at his upper arm around a breathless laugh. “You know the rules. No visible marks!”

 

It’s not like Kes _doesn’t_ know that they’re adults that get up to adult-like things, but it’s still his _dad_.

 

Breathing her in, Poe runs his nose down the leather lace lying against her neck, the one that holds the kyber crystal she still wears to honor the ghosts of Rogue One—ghosts who _finally_ moved on once the war was won—and he nudges to the side to shift the sleeve of her loose shirt out of the way, presses a kiss to the unbarred swathe of freckled skin, “What about here?”

 

Instead of answering, Rey hooks her ankles tighter against his lower back, squeezes her knees into the soft spots under his ribs, “Play nice, Poe Dameron.”

 

He kisses that spot again, darts his tongue between two freckles as a laugh rumbles through his chest, “I’m always nice.”

 

She tugs at his hair until he whines, “We don’t have time for your brand of nice,” she reminds, her fingers stroking the back of his neck in that _truly unfair_ way that makes his hips stutter into hers. “Because _lunch is ready_.”

 

Muffling a groan against her skin in lieu of answering, Poe closes his eyes and takes another deep, slow breath, but otherwise doesn’t make any attempt to move away from her.

 

Not from his favorite spot against her throat, even if his stomach _has_ been growling for the better part of the late morning.

 

He has more important things at hand. In his hands. In his arms. Against his chest.

 

But then Rey’s stomach growls, and this time when she squirms against him, it’s because she wants him to let her back down to her feet, “Come on,” she whines. “Your father said he was making your favorites.”

 

“He makes my favorites _every meal_ ,” he points out, helps her back down to her feet, but doesn’t let her go much further than that, one hand riding low over her hip and the other still resting on the side of her neck, so he can feel the fluttering of her pulse against his palm. “Everything he makes is my favorite.”

 

“That said,” Rey turns his head and kisses his hair where it curls at his temple. “ _I_ am hungry, and _I_ haven’t tried _everything_ your father’s ever cooked.”

 

At that, Poe finally lifts his head off her neck, slides her sleeve back into place before he cups her face in both hands and kisses her, but keeps it verging on chaste and short—well, maybe not _that_ short, _come on_ —before he pulls back, brushes his nose against hers, “You will,” he strokes his thumbs against her cheekbones. “We have time now.”

 

“I know,” she says, bright, and she presses her palm to his chest, right over his heart, and pushes him back far enough that she can slide out from between him and the tree. “I’m looking forward to it.”

 

She holds her hand out and Poe takes it, laces his fingers with hers and lets her lead him back to the house, where BB-8 and his father are waiting for them.

 

\--

That night, Poe walks into his childhood bedroom after a shower and finds Rey curled up in a ball on his bed in the corner where the walls meet, her shoulder propped on the wall as she gazes out the window next to his bed, eyes focused on the rain still dripping from the sky.

 

Rey has a squat mug of tea propped over one of her bent knees, and she’s wearing the t-shirt he planned to put on and, Poe tilts his head, narrows his eyes to see through the shadows thrown by the lamp on the other side of the room—

 

Oh, and very little else.

 

Nudging the door shut behind him and appreciating as much as ever that it _locks_ , Poe runs his towel through his damp hair a couple more times before he tosses it in the direction of his laundry basket, “What do you know, scavenger girl?”

 

“A lot of things,” she sips her tea, fingers poking out from where the long sleeves gather against her palms, shifts a little and looks away from the window. “I like the weather here.”

 

He snorts, “Trust me, it’s going to get old real quick. How’s a man supposed to build his girl a house if he has to stop for every storm?”

 

“You’ll figure it out,” she laughs around another sip of tea, holds her other hand out to him.

Crossing the room in three strides, Poe takes her hand in his as he snags her mug in his other hand. He steals a sip before placing it safely on the nightstand and joins her on the bed, flops back against the mismatched pillows piled on the headboard, pulls her into his side.

 

Rey’s eyes are bright as she settles in against him, splays a hand over his collarbone and curves her knee over his hip, “I _am_ happy, Poe,” she says against his skin, presses one kiss, and then another against his shoulder. “You don’t need to doubt that.”

 

He turns his head, shifts a little and presses his mouth to her hairline, “You really have no idea how amazing you are.”

 

“Of course I do, you remind me all the time.”

 

With a snort, Poe rolls over her and brushes kisses over her eyes, the bridge of her nose, over her parted mouth, rucks the shirt up over her hips and digs his thumb into her ribs until she squirms, gasps her laughter against his mouth, “Impertinent, that’s what you are,” he kisses her cheek, her jaw, the side of her mouth. “I’m trying to make a point here.”

 

Rey wraps her arm around his neck and pulls him onto her for another, longer kiss, “I know you are,” she murmurs. “And don’t think _you_ didn’t have every opportunity to make a name for yourself in the new government. Don’t think I didn’t hear all the rumors before we left.”

 

“Is this because I get more marriage proposals than you do?” He laughs against her mouth, hikes the shirt higher up over her ribs. “You know, I never meant for those posters to get out, be used like they were. It’s a little ridiculous.”

 

She snorts into his ear when he shifts and trails his mouth down her jaw, “Don’t even start with those posters,” she pokes at his side, fits her leg higher over his hip and uses that Jedi strength of hers to get him on his back before she cups his cheeks in her hands, makes him meet her eye. “Those posters were a miracle for our Rebellion and you know it.”

 

It might be true, but that doesn’t make his popularity any less grating.

 

Darting in, Rey presses her mouth to his, slides her tongue over his lower lip, shifts her hips over his when Poe cups them in his hands, “You’re a brilliant man, Poe Dameron.”

 

“You’re just saying that because my hands are on your ass.”

 

“Well,” Rey drawls, wrinkles her nose at him. “Maybe a little.”

 

Poe laughs into the next kiss, which muffles her squeak when he pushes at her hips and tilts her back over, so they tangle in an ungainly heap of half-clothed limbs, but—

 

Apparently, not muffled _enough_.

 

There’s a knock on the door, followed by a, “ _You two all right in there_?”

 

Swallowing hard, Poe resists the urge to snap at the partly well-meaning but partly very intentional interruption, “We’re fine, Dad!”

 

Kriff, it’s like he’s fifteen all over again.

 

“Yep, just fine,” Rey chimes in with the least convincing tone she’s _ever_ used—and it really _is_ like he’s fifteen and being caught fooling around—and Poe sighs and pulls back, helps her all the way onto her back.

“ _Okay. Good night, kids!_ ”

 

Poe groans as Kes’ footsteps fade toward the other side of the house, and he flops on top of Rey, “That’s it, we’re moving out. I’ll pitch us a tent in what’s eventually going to be our living room, because _I swear_ he does that on purpose.”

 

“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Rey scrubs her fingers through his hair, and the deep breaths she takes push her chest up into his.

 

“Not that bad? We had more privacy back on base! And that place was _haunted!_ ”

 

With a snort, Rey taps her palms against his sides, strokes them up and down his bare back, “I wouldn’t call that time we made out on top of your starfighter particularly _private_.”

 

“Yeah, but being caught by half my squadron isn’t as bad as being caught by my _dad_.”

Even though he can’t see it, Poe knows Rey’s arching a brow as she snorts at him, “ _Sure_ it’s not.”

 

Finally, Poe shifts off her, so he’s lying more on her side than _on top_ of her, and Rey shifts so she’s turned toward him. They’ll have to get under the covers soon, especially with how cold Kes keeps the house in deference to the Yavinese summer’s oppressive heat, but right now, he _really_ doesn’t want to move.

 

“Hey,” he kisses her nose, runs his thumb down the side of her neck. “I love you.”

 

Rey nudges nose against his mouth, then leans up, touches her lips to his. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I ended it with the thing. Of course I did.
> 
> So, as you can probably tell this is a SERIES, which means I'm not done here. In fact, there's going to be a companion piece to this from Rey's perspective that's going to bridge the gap between chapters three and four.
> 
> Coming...as soon as I finish writing it. Soon though! 
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 179 “The only time I’m not multitasking is when I’m sleeping. But considering how many bruises I wake up with, I probably multitask then too.”

**Author's Note:**

> One chapter down, three to go. I'm going to try to get the second chapter edited and posted by the end of the weekend, but who knows? Fortunately, everything is written, just needs editing. Then again, knowing how much longer this chapter got from draft one to now, it might take some time to make this the way I want it. 
> 
> Either way, more coming soon. I'm FortySevensWrites on Tumblr if you're interested in chapter previews and me reblogging whatever the hell tickles my fancy on my dashboard.
> 
> Prompt of the chapter from [The Fake Redhead.com](https://thefakeredhead.com/tfrs-prompt-library/)
> 
> Number 156:  
> “On a scale from one to ten, how bad do you think it would be if-“ 
> 
> “At least a twenty.”


End file.
